10/20/2014

You knew it was coming; now it's here. Apple just pulled back the curtain on the iPad mini 3 at its live media event in Cupertino, and so far it's pretty much what we expected -- a modestly updated tablet with some more familiar looks. The saga of...

09/01/2014

This week, we reviewed the HTC One for Windows, investigated Amazon's controversial e-book-pricing model, played around with Hyperlapse, learned about LG's G Watch R and more! Read on for Engadget's news highlights from the last seven days. Oh, and...

08/02/2014

iPad owners who have been using Microsoft's suite of Office tools for the past few months can now download the first major update for those apps since they were first released in late March,. These version 1. 1 updates offer a number of additional features

The PowerPoint update for iPad can now incorporate video and audio in a presentation, and video can be embedded directly from the Camera Roll. Also, Presenter View can be enabled when projecting a PowerPoint presentation to another screen. Hyperlinks can be be edited inside the app and there are some new eraser and pen settings.

The Excel app now allows for PivotTabels to be sorted, filtered, expanded and collapsed, along with a way to refresh them and show details. There's also a new flick gesture. Microsoft says:

Simply grab the selection handle, flick it in any direction, and Excel will automatically select from where you started to the next blank cell. Say you're at the top of a column of data and want to select all the way to the bottom. Just flick down and the column is selected automatically.

There's also been some more printing improvements for Excel, such as scaling options and more paper sizes. Finally, there's a way for the app to use hardware keyboards so that users can access familiar keyboard specific shortcuts.

Excel, PowerPoint and Word all now can export documents to PDF files in this new Office update, along with new image editing tools for cropping and resetting photos. Finally, the Office for iPad apps support third party fonts for the first time.

Just a reminder: While the Office apps are free to download and use for viewing documents, a paid Office 365 subscription is needed to edit files with the apps. Do you like what Microsoft is offering for this first big Office for iPad update?

12/22/2013

After two days of competition, Tokyo's team SCHAFT has won the DARPA Robotics Challenge in Miami. With 27 out of a possible 32 points in eight challenges, SCHAFT pulled out a decisive victory. IHMC Robotics (20 points), Tartan Rescue (18 points), MIT (16 points) and Robosimian (14 points) round out the top five. We can't wait for the final competition to come in 2014.

12/13/2013

Ofcom, the British communications industry regulator, has announced that finally mobile networks will have to cease charging for calls to freephone 0800 numbers. Or rather, from 2015 they will. In addition, changes will be made to charges for calling numbers used by companies and organisations that start with 08, 09 and 118.

Charges will be capped to all numbers starting with 09, often used by premium rate services, and in addition to 0800 going free, numbers starting 0808 and 116 will lose their mobile charges under the new regulations.

The fact that such charges have been allowed to go on for so long is still disappointing, but needless to say it's a change for the better. 26 June 2015 is the big day, which means sadly we're still saddled with paying for another 18 months. Better late than never.